Welcome to Storyflo Daily Climate. I'm Clara.
The story I want to lead with is from Climate Home News on electric vehicles. Per the IEA analysis Climate Home covered today, nearly 30 percent of cars sold globally this year are set to be electric — and the demand spike traces directly to the Iran war. After the US and Israeli strikes effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz in March, petrol and diesel prices spiked, and around 30 countries posted record-breaking monthly sales of battery EVs and plug-in hybrids. Q1 EV sales were up 80 percent across Asia ex-China and 75 percent across Latin America, driven by Brazil and Mexico. The energy-security argument for electrification is no longer hypothetical — it's the live demand driver.
A connected piece, also from Climate Home News, on the Petersberg Climate Dialogue in Berlin. Türkiye's climate minister and COP31 president Murat Kurum told fellow ministers the fossil-fuel crisis is itself the demonstration that fossil fuels cannot guarantee energy security. Climate Home reports broad ministerial agreement that the crisis should accelerate, not pause, the transition. Worth pairing with the EV-sales piece — the political framing is finally catching up to the consumer behavior.
Third lead, from Climate Home News reporting on Ember's 2025 report: a record clean-power surge met all global electricity demand growth last year, holding fossil generation flat. Solar grew at its fastest rate in eight years and alone met about 75 percent of new electricity demand. Combined with wind, hydro, and other low-carbon sources, clean generation rose 887 terawatt-hours against demand growth of 849 — fossil generation actually fell 0.2 percent. China and India did most of the heavy lifting. The decoupling-of-emissions-from-growth thesis just got its cleanest annual datapoint.
For policy watchers, Climate Home News has Rachel Rose Jackson on the upcoming Santa Marta conference in Colombia — a first-of-its-kind UNFCCC-adjacent gathering on transitioning away from fossil fuels. Jackson's frame is that the convening is a welcome break from the COP pattern of fossil-fuel-influenced agenda-setting, but only if Santa Marta is shielded from the same lobbying that has neutered previous outcomes. Watch the credentialing rules — that's the tell.
And finally, a Climate Home Q&A on the US story beyond Trump. The dean interviewed argues that despite the administration's withdrawal from the UN climate regime and Treasury Secretary Bessent's recent attacks on World Bank and IMF climate work, sub-national US climate action — states, cities, corporates — is still meaningfully decarbonizing. Useful corrective if you've been writing off the US grid.
That's your Storyflo Daily Climate. Sources in the notes. Clara out.
